Love, Lucy by Lucille Ball

Love, Lucy is the autobiography of the famous television comedienne Lucille Ball. Through the chapters she talks about how she discovered her talents as a young, vivacious child in Celeron, New York. She also talks very candidly about her family, her experiences in New York, and eventually her acting career which began through a simple discovery.

The book takes the readers from acting job to acting job with Ms. Ball, giving just enough information to orient yourself in the time and place in this world when things were simpler and you could live nicely on Ogden Drive for $1000 a week. She ends the book with a positive note, but the story was far from being over since this book had been written prior to 1964 and shelved until it was discovered in the 1990's.

The best parts about this book are not really the name dropping, as so many autobiographies rely on, but by the way the story is told through anecdotes and moves steadily through the years without having to backtrack or skip a few beats. Ball is very open and honest with her childhood and her young adult life, talking about friends, family, and even her love interests.

There are, however, some key aspects lacking in this book. While she is very open and honest about events, it seems at times that she is holding back her real feelings about situations. After her first husband, Desi Arnaz, is introduced into the book, there seems to be a sudden drawing in feelings and expresses the story mostly through facts by that point. It is understandable that she wrote this way, having been not five years divorced and recently remarried at the time this book was written.

Another aspect of the writing that might make readers turn away by the end of the story is how Ball fights with herself about her marriage to Arnaz. At many points she says that she could have been a better wife, but the next paragraph turns the thought around and pushes the reader into a whirlwind of being a better wife would have made a better husband, and a better husband could have turned her into a better wife. This is why it is a little disappointing that Ball never took up this project again later on in life, when there was a little more distance.

Anyone who is a fan of Lucille Ball will love reading about her life through a first person perspective. It not only gives you insight to the family dynamic that brought about I Love Lucy, but it will also give you an honest perspective of the golden years in Hollywood from a person who had not achieved instant stardom and had to fight her way up the studio food chain.